Chapter 5 – Call Him Daddy
Wednesday
“Would you hurry up?” Sophie said as she slammed her locker door. “It’s finally time for our coding class. I’m dying to see this hot teacher.”
She was right…I was moving as slowly as possible. I grabbed a new notebook from my locker, closed the door, and started fidgeting with the lock.
“No one’s going to steal your textbooks. Come on.” She started walking down the hallway. Or skipping may have been a better description. Her excitement was radiating off her.
I sighed. This morning I had been really looking forward to my one class with Axel and Jacob. But now? I was dreading it for the same reason I had been looking forward to it before. Axel and Jacob. I had no idea where I was going to sit. Next to Axel? Or Jacob? Between them? God, what am I going to do?
“You’re driving me crazy,” Sophie said and retreated back to me. She grabbed my arm to pull me toward our last class. “Aren’t you excited to see the smoking hot specimen behind the desk?”
“No, not really.”
“But I’ve heard at least a dozen girls say he’s hotter than Mr. Halifax. Which is obvs impossible. If the new teacher is close though?” She put her hand to her chest and sighed. “I’m going to do so many unspeakable things to him to make Mr. Halifax jealous.”
I laughed.
“I’m serious. First I’m going to start flirting with him in the hallways. Super hard. Which will lead to more than flirting. A touch here and there. It will seem innocent, but we’ll both be dying to make it dirty. And then when I have him right where I want him, I’m thinking of just banging him right on top of his desk. Or maybe with my back against the chalkboard.” She bit her lip.
“Wait, Mr. Halifax or the new teacher?”
“The new one. Well…both eventually. But probably the new guy first. I have such a good plan. Oh, and of course I’ll blow him under his desk. That’s the key to any man’s heart.”
I just stared at her. “That can’t possibly be true.”
“It 100% is. Wow. Now that I think of it, you need to just blow Axel.”
I was pretty sure my jaw dropped.
“I mean, don’t make that face. But something similar, yeah. You should look a little more eager than scared.” She tilted her head to the side. “Or horrified.”
“I’m not going to give Axel head.”
“Why? Because you’re actually thinking of doing it to…Jacob instead? If you’re going with the jealousy plan like mine, that is.”
I swallowed hard. It wasn’t about making Axel jealous. Jacob was being really sweet. He’d changed over the summer. He got more handsome somehow. Or maybe I’d changed. I wasn’t sure. But things felt different between us all of a sudden. And I was so freaking confused. I just needed a few minutes of silence to figure it out, but it seemed like that was impossible here. I needed to change the subject instead. “Wait, why are you trying to win over the heart of the new teacher?”
“I’m not.”
“You just said that a blowjob was the key to a man’s heart. And that you were going to blow our new teacher.”
“Oh.” She laughed. “There’s so many reasons to blow someone. Winning their heart is just one. A side effect if you will. In this case, I’m hoping for Mr. Halifax to combust at the sight of it. Can you imagine what Mr. Halifax’s face would look like if he walked in on me with the new teacher’s cock in my mouth? This is going to be epic. I’m already drooling.”
“You’re so weird.”
“What? Everyone says he’s beautiful. Certainly his penis is too. From my experience, beautiful men have beautiful penises.”
Axel and Jacob were both beautiful. But I had no idea what a beautiful penis looked like.
“I can’t wait to see our new teacher’s big, beautiful member.” She moved her hands apart a foot and lifted her eyebrows at me. “I bet it’s at least this big.”
So apparently beautiful just meant large. I rolled my eyes.
Sophie walked into our coding class and froze, almost making me bump into her. And then she started making a gagging noise.
“Soph, are you okay?”
“I’m gonna throw up,” she groaned and started coughing.
Oh my God. Where is the trash can? “Do you need to go to the nurse? Here, let me help.” I tried to reach out my hand for her, but instead of taking it she gagged again and gestured toward the front of the classroom.
What was she doing? “Soph?”
She kept flailing her arm toward the front of the room. “The new teacher is…is…he’s your…” She gagged again and her face was deadly pale.
I looked over to where she was pointing.
No.
My dad was standing there scowling, his arms folded across his chest.
Oh God no.
Staring directly at me like he was going to murder me.
What the hell is happening right now?
I looked back at Sophie and then back at my dad.
No. No, no, no. The new teacher was my…dad? Kill me now.
Sophie gagged harder.
Shit! I looked down at my rolled skirt and my high heels. My dad really was going to murder me.
“God, I said I wanted to suck Uncle James’ penis,” Sophie whispered at me. “Gross. Vom.” She was literally choking on air as she tried not to throw up at the thought. “I said he could do unspeakable things to me.” She coughed. “Right on that desk. Or against the chalkboard. I’m so gross. I’m going to be sick.”
“Sophie, are you alright?” My dad asked as he walked over to us. He tried to put his hand on her back but she moved away from him. “I’m fine. I didn’t say anything weird at all. If you heard anything I was just kidding.” Sophie put her hand over her mouth, probably more scared of word vomit than real vomit.
He just stared at her.
Sophie collapsed into the closest desk and gagged again.
My dad turned back to me. “Is she okay?”
“She’s fine.” She just accidentally talked about having sex with you. And so many other things involving something she shouldn’t have ever been talking about. God, I was going to throw up too. “But I should probably sit down with her to make sure…”
“Not so fast.” He grabbed my elbow so I couldn’t retreat. “What are you wearing?”
“My uniform.”
His eyebrows lowered. “This wasn’t how you looked this morning.”
“What are you even doing here?”
“Besides catching you in a lie? I’m your new teacher.” He pointed to his name on the board.
Mr. Hunter was scrawled along the board. I laughed. “No you’re not.”
“Yes, I am. This was my surprise.”
I just stared at him.
“This morning…I told you and Liam I had a surprise for you guys. This is it. I’m the new computer science teacher.”
“Whh…why?”
“I could ask you the same thing. Why is your skirt rolled up? Why are you wearing heels? And who the hell’s jacket is that?”
“It’s Axel’s.” I hadn’t been able to take it off. Even though I was confused…I wasn’t confused about how good Axel’s jacket smelled. Or about the fact that I felt amazing wearing it. And this jacket was my way out. I pulled it around me, trying to hide my rolled-up skirt. But my dad still looked like he wanted to kill me.
“Axel Stevens?”
“Of course Axel Stevens. What other Axel’s do we know?”
Axel and Jacob walked in right at that moment. Axel took one look at the board and then back at my dad. He laughed. “Hey, Uncle James. So you’re the new teacher everyone’s talking about?” He looked over at Sophie who was still gagging at her desk.
I really wished he’d stop calling my dad Uncle James. We weren’t related. He was the son of one of my mom’s best friends. He needed to quit with that. It just made Sophie’s incest phase more accurate. And I wasn’t into incest. I was just into Axel.
“I am,” my dad said. “And is this your jacket?” He pointed to me.
God, Dad. Was he trying to mortify me?
“Yeah,” Axel said. “I didn’t like what she was wearing so I was trying to help her cover it up.”
“Oh.” My dad looked back at me and then nodded. “Thank you, Axel. I really appreciate you looking out for her.”
I didn’t like this conversation. At all. My dad and Axel were suddenly friends? My dad had made it pretty clear my whole freaking life that he hated Axel. He hated that I hung out with him one-on-one. He hated that I was so close to a guy. And now they were bonding over what I should and shouldn’t wear? What the hell? Where the hell did either of them get off?
“Can I sit down now?” I asked.
“Yes, but we’ll talk about this later.” My dad gave me that look that definitely meant I was going to be grounded.
Great.
“He’s so hot,” I heard some girl whisper to her friend as I went to sit down.
Kill me now. I plopped down next to Sophie, no longer caring about where Axel or Jacob sat.
“Am I going to hell?” Sophie groaned.
“No,” I whispered.
“But I said I wanted to bang my uncle.”
“You didn’t know it was going to be my dad.”
“Still. Ew.” She sighed. “How awkward is it that pretty much every girl in our school was swooning over him all day?”
“Very awkward.”
Axel plopped down in the seat behind me.
“It’s going to be fine,” Jacob whispered. He patted my shoulder as he sat down behind Sophie.
I heard the creak of the chair behind me.
“You owe me one,” Axel whispered into my ear.
His hot breath tickled the back of my neck. My heart started racing as I turned to him. “For what?”
“For giving you my jacket to help cover up your outfit.”
I swallowed hard. I didn’t even know what to say to him. My outfit was great. Jacob got it. I turned back to the front of the classroom and tried not to sigh.
“You can keep it,” Axel whispered. “It looks better on you than it does on me.”
What did he mean by that? The only other girls that wore varsity jackets were dating football players. And Axel and I weren’t dating. He didn’t even like me without my glasses. He’d made that perfectly clear. He liked nothing about the new me. My mind was spinning. Why was he being so confusing?
The bell rang, signaling the start of class.
“As you probably know by now,” my dad said, “I’m Scarlett’s father.”
“I wouldn’t mind calling him Daddy,” some girl whispered behind me.
Now I was the one fake-retching.
My dad either didn’t hear the comment or just chose to ignore it. He started talking about the curriculum instead.
“Do you think any of our classmates know about how your dad met your mom?” Sophie asked. “You know…the whole professor-student relationship thing?”
Yeah, I knew what she meant. “God I hope not. That means they’ll think they have a chance. Which they don’t.” My parents were overly affectionate in my opinion.
“Still. As soon as that rumor gets out, the girls in this class are going to lose their minds. I obviously don’t want to bang my uncle, but I’m not blind. He’s clearly good looking. All the girls in the school are going crazy over him.”
Why the hell did my dad think it was appropriate to start teaching at my school?
***
I waited until the rest of the students filtered out of the classroom before going up to my dad. “Can you please just undo whatever you did?”
He looked up at me from his desk. “What do you mean?”
“Please, Dad. You can’t teach here. There are like a million schools in the city you can teach at if you suddenly want to teach high schoolers instead of college students. Or better yet…just retire because you don’t need the money.”
He smiled. “I only took this job for a year. You’re going to be going off to college next fall. I just wanted to spend more time with you.”
Honestly that was kind of sweet.
“And it’s a good thing I’m here too. Better to keep an eye on Axel and Jacob this way.”
So much for sweet. He was just here to scare guys off from dating me. Wait. “Why do you need to keep an eye on Axel and Jacob?”
“They were both staring at you during my lecture.”
Were they really? “It’s not called a lecture, Dad. We’re not in college. It’s just class.”
He shrugged. “Same difference. You ready to head home? You’re grounded starting right now, so you better get comfy in your room.”
“Dad!”
“I told you not to roll up your skirt. And what happened to your other perfectly good shoes?”
“You saw what the other girls wore to your classes all day.”
“But you’re not like the other girls, pumpkin. You’re better than them.”
I folded my arms across my chest. I knew he was being nice. But I wanted to fit in with the other girls. “You’re trying to ruin my life.”
My dad sighed. “No. I’m just being your dad.” He put his arm around my shoulders and led me out of the classroom.
This was mortifying in so many ways. But at the same time, it was actually kind of comforting that he was here. The rumor was probably already spreading that he was my dad. Maybe that would make Gigi leave me alone for once. But I didn’t think his arm was around my shoulders to protect me from Gigi. He was doing it to keep Axel and Jacob away from me. Axel and Jacob.
It wasn’t like he was buddying up to Liam in the hallways. Not that Liam would care. Apparently he was adjusting to high school just fine. He probably wouldn’t think this was embarrassing at all.
We stopped by my locker so I could grab the books I needed. “You should have heard all the rumors going around the school today,” I said.
“Oh you mean like that call me Daddy comment?” he said with a laugh. “That was funny.”
“It wasn’t funny. It was gross. And what would mom think?”
“She’d laugh too. She knows my heart belongs with her.” He spotted Sophie in the hallway. “Do you need a ride home, Soph?” my dad asked.
“Nope.” She shuddered, holding back another gag and then ran into the bathroom.
“Are you sure she’s okay? Should I call her dad?”
“No, she’s fine. She’s just having trouble swallowing some news.” Ew. Why did I word it that way?
My dad shrugged. “Well, this is going to be a fun year,” he said as we made our way out of Empire High.
I froze in my tracks. “Wait, you said you only took this job for a year. Where are you teaching next year?”
“We’ll see what happens.” He smiled down at me.
Hell no. “You can’t follow me to college, Dad.”
“Who said anything about following you to college? That would be very controlling of me. And I’m certainly not controlling.”
He was the definition of controlling. Why else would he be here?
“Come on. Your mom has ice cream waiting for us. She had a feeling you’d need it after my surprise. I don’t know why.”
I laughed. Because there was nothing else I could do. There was no way my dad was going to quit teaching here. If anything, my stupid outfit had solidified his need to insert himself into my life. And the fact that both Axel and Jacob had been staring at me during class. Had they really been? Or was my dad just overreacting?
“This is going to be the best year ever,” my dad said as he opened up the car door for me.
That’s what I’d thought at the beginning of the day. But I wasn’t as convinced now. My dad teaching here was kind of a disaster. And Axel kissing Gigi was an epic mess. But he’d given me his varsity jacket. And Jacob had stared at me in a way that no one ever had before. I had no idea how to feel about any of it.
As I climbed into my dad’s car, my phone buzzed.
I pulled it out and saw a text from Sophie: “This is going to be the worst year ever. Your dad is totally going to cock block me with Mr. Halifax, isn’t he?”
I shook my head. It was definitely going to be either the best or worst year ever. I just didn’t know which one yet. But I didn’t think my dad was going to interfere in Sophie’s love life. I looked down at Axel’s varsity jacket. He was 100% going to interfere in mine.